


hiraeth

by rayfelle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Era, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 12:22:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11290653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayfelle/pseuds/rayfelle
Summary: (on how Tom Riddle is not the same as Voldemort)They aren’t the same being anymore, but Tom Riddle placed the first bricks of the road that Voldemort now walks upon.





	hiraeth

Tom is a fragment sealed inside of an old diary. He is also another one left to gather dust inside of a ring bathed in blood, in the old silver of the necklace that has seen too much. His traces in the golden cup, the snake and one more are so weak – he is no longer Tom Riddle but more like _Voldemort_.

He is a memory, a flicker of time torn open and scattered along the land.

But Tom still remembers, he still feels, he has enough time to think and to wonder about his choices and all that he has committed. His life is cut into pieces, their edges torn and muddled, with no recollection of anything that happened after their creation.

Time both moves like lightning and breathes like a dying man.

Inside of Voldemort, the monster that has cast away his humanity still lives a part of Tom Riddle – the human that wished for a change, for the power, strength and _justice_ he had been deprived of during childhood. Inside of this decaying beast still lays a part of a past that cannot be erased so easily, sealed away so simply.

(and it _yearns_ )

Like heartbeat the horcruxes vibrate one after another. _Thump – thump – thump – thump – thump_ – they go as clockwork, like seconds that never stop, like air that _cannot_ be stopped anymore. There goes a beat from one to another, a memory that spans across them in torn pieces and violently scratched out wounds.

And yet, a part of the old Tom Riddle still lives inside of Voldemort.

They are different, these two. Perhaps not human, neither of them, not anymore, had never been. There was never enough emotion, never enough compassion, love, _feelings_. Hurt festered inside of the boy, greed that surpassed that of a dragon’s, _desire_ for more, for better, for recognition, for respect he had never had. ( _abuse did not weed out the bad, it only helped it grow_ )

Night is cold against the snake scale that is Voldermort’s skin. The sun rays burn the sensitive skin as good as an _incendio_. He has it all – the respect, the fear, the power. But is it enough? Is it truly all that he wanted, had hoped for when the remains of a love potion coursed though his blood and made him out of marble and ice?

Voldemort is a monster, but Tom Riddle never was.

His soul is torn and abused, nonexistent and _weak_ where it sits inside of what is left of the boy who was saved by magic and hated for his blood. The boy, who hoped to find a future in the world that made him, but found discrimination and distrust instead. The magicals treated the boy with fake smiles the same way as the orphanage did, in the end.

“You destroyed us.” Tom Riddle smiles and his teeth are covered in blood, his eyes flake over with white mist. He doesn’t see, he doesn’t smell, he doesn’t even hear the sound of his own voice. Immortality was both a cure and a curse; it was a gamble that never worked out.

Once there was a vision, a plan, a _goal_. Now there is only mad desire, fueled by insanity that has never been that strong and overwhelming. Once there was a jaded child with magic in his blood and a past that infected his being. Once there was a child that could have been raised to still hold some kind of humanity in his freezing hands. A long time ago that was still possible, mistakes of a young and foolish mother could still be righted, if even in the smallest of details and most meaningful of ways.

Now there is only a being that is neither a human, nor is it a beast, left behind. His bones are frail and his skin pulled tightly over them. The joints of his wrists protrude like ugly scars, the whites of his eyes long turned ruby red and face is deformed from the former beauty it used to hold. He stands atop of corpses and acts of the deepest of darkness done, he is alone and walking towards something that is not worth sacrificing his _self_ over.

What is left of Tom Riddle stands in the shadows – bleeding out, blind and deaf – fragments of what was once whole scattered around his feet like mementos and broken toys. His teeth are still the color of blood, his fingers long and reaching towards what no longer is Tom Riddle, but something _else_ entirely.

His horcruxes sing in a chorus of eerie whispers and remind of what once was. Of what he could have been, of what he gave up, of what he betrayed in his greed.

“You destroyed us.” Tom Riddle repeats and licks his lips clean of dirt and curses that glow bright green in the darkest of sunsets. The words ring in the air, they keep floating between the almost-human and the almost-monster. “What have you become.”

They aren’t the same _being_ anymore. There are the past and the future, bridges to what was once in the middle, the stage of between, have been burned and scattered on English soil, locked in hideouts and forgotten. Ashes upon ashes, blood upon blood and bones upon bones. Tom Riddle placed the first bricks of the road that Voldemort now walks upon.

( _their sin, their curse, their choices_ )

Voldemort has almost forgotten the tongue of humans, the words are sharp as glass on his tongue, syllables stretch too long and sound more like the hiss of thousands of snakes when he speaks. “I am what you _wished for_.” In his madness his obsession is the only truth. It is a disease that rots him from the inside out, that destroys slowly and painfully.

His shattered soul barely breathes inside of the hollow abyss where once a heart sat. Tom Riddle’s unseeing eyes look into the abyss and do not shy from the black tar that seeps out between the cracks, the scales and the too thin skin. Instead he laughs and it sounds like the gurgle of a hungry dementor, like the dying screams of a mother trying to protect her child.

Tom Riddle is a fragment sealed inside of different objects, he is a memory, he is something to be ashamed for. Tom Riddle is a skin that has been ripped off and burned, he is something shameful and something to be hidden away and never remembered.

Tom Riddle was not Voldemort, only a cut off possibility for a better future.


End file.
